


Girl Talk

by futuresoon



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Fluff, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 19:13:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/futuresoon/pseuds/futuresoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The floor isn't great for talking to. Wendy is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Girl Talk

**Author's Note:**

  * For [abcooper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/abcooper/gifts).



Monday mornings at the Mystery Shack tended to be dreary, sluggish things, akin to swimming through a swamp: slow-going, vaguely worrisome, and not unlikely to give you strange diseases. Wendy, as far as Mabel could tell, had experienced many of them, and had grown used to the effects. 

Mabel had not.

She lay slumped on the floor of the main room, face-first into the wooden floorboards, which was inadvisable for a variety of reasons, primarily including the splinters but also the termites, the pervasive smell of rotten eggs, and what Grunkle Stan would swear to the highest authority was only a _healthy_ level of black mold. The floor, Mabel decided, was her closest friend. If only in terms of physical proximity.

“Gragrlbrdlth,” she said to the floor.

The floor did not deign to answer.

Wendy, however, did. “Not hanging too well?” she asked, lifting her eyes from her examination of her fingernails. Maybe they needed cleaning. Maybe they didn’t. Mabel did not think she would ever know.

Mabel rolled onto her side. It wasn’t as comfortable, but it allowed enough face-space to converse with beings who could answer back. “Monday,” she said. “In the morning. Monday in the morning. Monnnnndaaaaaayyyyyy.”

Wendy nodded as if she knew all the answers in the universe. Perhaps she did. “I hear you,” she said. “At least I get paid for it.”

Mabel narrowed her eyes into razor-thin slits, suitable for precise lasers. Grunkle Stan only paid her and Dipper in what he called ‘memory money’. In the future, he said, they would look back upon this time and decide that the experience was worth a fortune. Mabel thought that was probably true, but not in ways that involved Grunkle Stan. Memories of him were half-off at the dollar store.

“Not a _lot,_ but money’s money, right? I’m saving up for a better car. Don’t want to have to take it to the auto shop every Tuesday,” Wendy said. She shrugged in the smallest and least exerting manner possible. It was barely visible to the human eye. Mabel saw it pretty easy, though.

“I wanna car,” Mabel mumbled. “A big pink one with those eyelashes over the headlights that make it look like it’s got eyes. I’ll trick it out so all the boys will want my hot jams.”

“I think you’re mixing your slang metaphors, dude,” Wendy said. “But that sounds pretty cool.” She leaned back in her chair and propped her feet up against the front counter. Mabel saw the flecks of dirt on the bottoms of her shoes: light, dusty brown from right outside the Shack; darker brown from maybe the edge of the forest or something; Mabel was pretty sure those reddish bits were dirt, anyway.

It was hard to keep craning her head to look up, so Mabel lifted herself back onto her feet as if from a great slumber. Part of her imagined that that music from _2001_ was playing in the background. The floor could only be her closest companion for so long. Bitter tears were shed, somewhere, at their separation. Oh, her feet remained, but that was only a frail echo of how her face had scratched against the burgeoning health code violations. Parting was the sweetest sorrow.

Mabel plodded over to the desk and leaned against it from the other side, careful to avoid Wendy’s probably-dirty shoes. “Boys be all over you,” she said. “Like, you don’t even _try._ What is the up with that, even?”

Wendy put only the very slightest additional effort into her new shrug. “I dunno,” she said. “Boys, I guess. You know.”

Mabel wrinkled her nose. “I don’t.”

“Yeah,” Wendy said, after a moment. “I don’t either.” 

“The only boys who wanna ride _this_ bus are crazy in the everything,” Mabel said mournfully. She gestured to herself. “Is it the sweaters? Are they weirdo magnets?”

Her current one was bright purple with a brighter yellow duck on it. The duck looked cheerful, she thought. She didn’t understand why people thought its wide, friendly eyes were creepy. It was only staring at you because it liked you. 

“They’re weird, I’ll give you that,” Wendy said. “But, like, in a cool way. They’re all _personal-style_ and crap. Can’t get fashion like that off a store dummy.”

Mabel beamed. Dipper always told her continued exposure to her sweaters could make a grown man cry. Wendy wasn’t a grown man, or at least she didn’t look like one. Maybe that was why. Or maybe Wendy was just really cool. Mabel liked the second option.

“Where do you get them, anyway?” Wendy asked. “I see you with a different one every day. Did you pack that many?”

Mabel shook her head. “I can’t tell you,” she said. “Trade secret.” Which it was, more or less. More or less.

“Whatever,” Wendy said. “They’re cool.”

Mabel could not remember a time anyone had ever called her sweaters ‘cool’.

Mabel decided Wendy was going to be her best friend.

There was Dipper, yeah, but that was Dipper. That was _twins._ Twins was different. Dipper wasn’t bad at twins, but he’d be terrible at best friends, Mabel was pretty sure. He’d never really had any back home. Neither had she. 

Gravity Falls, though, Gravity Falls had all kinds of stuff that they didn’t have back home. Ghosts. Mummies. A new mystery every week. In the context of all that, best friends was a real possibility.

“We should hang more,” Mabel said. “Just us. No boys or crazy or jams. You can do…whatever it is that you do, and I can do tricks with my hair. See?” She flopped it over her face like a curtain and stood back, extending her arms forward. “I’m a monster! I’m gonna wreck all your TVs!”

Wendy laughed. “Sure, why not,” she said. “Roof’s open whenever.” The front door opened with a jingle. “Dang, it’s a customer. Hold that thought.”

Wendy gave a half-hearted wave to the nervous-looking man who had just entered. “Welcome to the Mystery Shack,” she said tonelessly. “Come examine a world of wonder.”

Mabel turned towards the customer and raises her arms towards him, instead. “Bleah!” she said through her hair.

The customer made a small squeaking noise and ran back outside.

“Can’t blame him,” Wendy said. Mabel couldn’t either.

The door jingled again. Dipper ran through it like a squirrel seeking shelter from a hurricane. _“Mabel!”_ he screeched.

Mabel flipped her hair back to normal and looked over at Wendy. “I must return to my people,” she said. “But roof later, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Wendy said, with as much of a smile as she ever gave. “Have a good time.”

Mabel nodded solemnly and ran outside with Dipper. Probably something really interesting was happening. Maybe vampires? She seriously wanted vampires. _Seriously._ Or selkies! She had a list and everything, and she hadn’t ticked that one off yet.

Whatever it was, though, she hoped it would be over with soon. She had _best friends_ stuff to deal with.

(It turned out to be pixies. The fluttery, hummingbirdy kind, with pointy teeth and pointier claws. Having a thick sweater turned out to be very useful. 

Wendy thought the story was really cool.

Dipper spent the next week whining about how Mabel had betrayed him, and it took her a while to figure out why.)


End file.
